#Soho notes to bear pdf#
#Soho notes to bear series#

Department of Justice linked the activity to Sandworm and announced efforts to disrupt the botnet. In May 2018, Cisco Talos published the blog that exposed VPNFilter and the U.S. Sandworm also deployed VPNFilter against targets in the Republic of Korea before the 2018 Winter Olympics. VPNFilter targeting was widespread and appeared indiscriminate, with some exceptions: Cisco Talos reported an increase of victims in Ukraine in May 2018. They also allowed monitoring of Modbus SCADA protocols, which appears to be an ongoing requirement for Sandworm, as also seen in their previous attacks against ICS networks. These modules enabled traffic manipulation, destruction of the infected host device, and likely enabled downstream devices to be exploited. VPNFilter was deployed in stages, with most functionality in the third-stage modules.

#Soho notes to bear series#

VPNFilter The malware was first exposed in 2018Ī series of articles published by Cisco Talos in 2018 describes VPNFilter and its modules in detail.

#Soho notes to bear pdf#

It also provides mitigation measures to help organizations defend against malware.Ĭlick here for a PDF version of this report. An NCSC malware analysis report on Cyclops Blink is also available. This advisory summarizes the VPNFilter malware it replaces, and provides more detail on Cyclops Blink, as well as the associated tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by Sandworm.

A series of disruptive attacks against Georgia in 2019Ĭyclops Blink appears to be a replacement framework for the VPNFilter malware exposed in 2018, and which exploited network devices, primarily small office/home office (SOHO) routers and network attached storage (NAS) devices.

Attacks against the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2018.

The BlackEnergy disruption of Ukrainian electricity in 2015.The malicious cyber activity below has previously been attributed to Sandworm: The NCSC, CISA, and the FBI have previously attributed the Sandworm actor to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate’s Russian (GRU’s) Main Centre for Special Technologies (GTsST).

have identified that the actor known as Sandworm or Voodoo Bear is using a new malware, referred to here as Cyclops Blink. The United Kingdom's (UK) National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. The Sandworm actor, which the United Kingdom and the United States have previously attributed to the Russian GRU, has replaced the exposed VPNFilter malware with a new more advanced framework.